Antelope hunting

At the beginning of this month, we had my mom come and stay with the girls so Jason and I could go hunting. We had two antelope tags to fill this year. We were able to drive down to our spot in the afternoon and hunt a little before it got too dark. It has been about 12 years since I last shot a gun, so I wasn't too confident in my abilities. Jason was giving me a few pointers, and just before dark, we spotted "a shooter". I was trying to shoot off the top of the truck, which is something that I have never done before. I just couldn't get the buck in the scope to get a good shot. This guy was acting pretty weird. He was running around chasing the other bucks and ran straight at the truck. I snuck around to the back of the truck and tried to shoot off of the tool box. I got one shot off when the buck stopped. I was shaking and nervous because, like I said, it has been a long time for me. The antelope didn't even flinch when he heard the gun shot. Jason was positive that I had missed him, but we decided to go check it out anyway. We started walking toward him when he did the weirdest thing I have ever seen an animal do when it has been shot at. Instead of running away from us, he layed down. I sat down to try to get another shot at him, but he spooked and ran away. It was really dark by this time, so we decided to go back to camp and look for him in the morning.

In the morning, we started to drive back to where I shot at the antelope. It took us awhile because we had to stop and glass every few minutes. We saw so many antelope! Jason took a couple of shots at a monster, but didn't hit him because the bullets he was shooting with were bad. We finally made it to the spot where we last saw "my" antelope. At this point we were both convinced that I had missed him. Jason was glad because he thought the antelope wasn't as big as we first thought. Then I just happened to look over on another hillside and there he was! I was so excited! My first antelope! And he was pretty big! One thing that I noticed is that he had a huge stick stuck in his front hoof. Maybe that would explain his crazy behavior the night before. I know having something stuck in my shoe sure makes me crazy. Once we had him all dressed out, it was time to get Jason's tag filled.

Driving back to camp, we spotted Jason's antelope. He didn't hear our truck at all, and we watched him bed down. Jason snuck out of the truck and shot him. All in all, we were done hunting before 9 a.m. on our first full day out!

Some lessons learned: Shoot the guns BEFORE we go out hunting. Make sure we have good bullets.

Jason unofficially scored these guys when we got home. Mine grossed 78, which is actually pretty good, but he had some points deducted because one horn was slightly tweaked. So mine ended up scoring 75.5. Jason's scored a 74. I have to brag that I shot a bigger antelope than my hubby!